Remotely detected fire events: Potential and challenges of validating against national ground data

The Earth Observation data are recognized as valuable source of information about fire events. In this paper we present the potential of using the satellite-based `hotspots´ in management of fires as well as challenges of validating the remotely detected fire events in Poland. We compare the spatio-temporal distribution of fires derived from satellites against ground-based fires reported in the National Forest Fire Information System. The preliminary results showed that about 35% of the remotely detected fires were recorded in the ground-based fire database over the period 2002-2013. The satellites has missed the vast majority of vegetation fires. The limitation of both databases was also discussed. The analysis of fire intensity, for the fires detected both remotely and on the ground, demonstrated that forest fires were the greatest and the most intensive fires. However, the analysis of the mean Fire Radiative Power values calculated for all recorded MODIS hotspots confirmed that wetland fires are the most intensive considering that the number of burning events was relatively low.